Kansas basketball: “What if”

As the season comes to a close, Kansas basketball looked very different than it did at the beginning of the season.

The 2018-19 Kansas Men’s basketball season has come to an end as the No. 5 seed Auburn Tigers pummeled the No. 4 seed Kansas Jayhawks 89-75 in the NCAA Tournament.

As the Jayhawks failed to make it to the second weekend, Kansas fans such as myself have to suffer the bittersweet feeling of watching the remaining weeks of the NCAA tournament.

Of course, being a major fan of the sport, I’m still going to enjoy watching the remaining games.

But no longer feeling the anxiety and hope that comes in anticipation of my team’s next game takes away some of the late-March charm that I’ve become accustomed to.

And yes, I understand that I’ve been spoiled as a Jayhawk fan, considering the majority of schools struggle just to get into the tournament every year.

But it’s just different when you’re a fan of a blue-blood basketball school.

Simply receiving a tournament bid isn’t enough. If your school doesn’t make a deep run, the Twitter trolls will start crawling out of their cave’s feasting for that sweet nectar that is seeing the elite programs fail.

While my 21 years as a Kansas fan has been overwhelmingly positive, I’ve still gone through seemingly all the emotions March has to offer: First weekend exits, Consecutive Elite 8 failures, Final 4’s, and hell, I’ve even seen my team win it all.

But then there’s this season. This March Madness loss is so much different than the rest.

This one will never sit right with me.

Taking into consideration all of the pre-season hype that surrounded this team, everything that could have possibly gone wrong, went wrong.

Kansas has seen unfortunate injuries and players not living up to their potential plenty of times in the past, but again, this time is just different.

3 great players were out for the majority of the season, and the other surprised us all by his mediocrity.

Junior center Udoka Azubuike, the cornerstone of the Jayhawk offense: Injured again, out for the season.

Sophomore forward Silvio De Sousa, a rising star in last year’s NCAA Tournament: Suspended by the NCAA for two seasons.

Senior guard LaGerald Vick, the team’s lone great 3-point shooter and Senior: Left the team for personal reasons.

And finally, freshman guard Quentin Grimes, the preseason lottery pick/All-American: Extremely average freshman season, given his skillset.

With everything that combined to equal this bizarre season, the question that will forever loom over the 2018-19 Kansas Jayhawks basketball team is, “What if?”

What if all of the big guys were able to play this year?

Think about how insane this Kansas frontcourt was coming into the season: Azubuike, De Sousa, junior forward Dedric Lawson, junior forward Mitch Lightfoot and freshman big David McCormack.

Not only would this be easily the strongest frontcourt in the country, but it would also be the strongest in the history of Kansas basketball.

Kansas already had a star in Lawson, along with two quality spark plugs in Lightfoot and McCormack.

But with Azubuike and De Sousa, those are two players that check nearly all of the boxes in the areas that this year’s team was missing: Athleticism, rim protection, high-percentage shots, above-the-rim offense and NCAA tournament experience.

And with all of the inconsistency Kansas experienced in its backcourt, a stacked lineup of big men is exactly what it needed.

Even when the Jayhawks had a healthy Azubike, he alone was just enough to mask over most of the backcourt flaws.

Kansas was undefeated up until his injury and it beat two top-five teams with him in the lineup. Two!

Imagine the damage this team could’ve done with an experienced De Sousa coming off the bench to replace Azubuike or Lawson.

What if Vick remained on the team with the addition of those two?

Vick adds as a legitimate 3-point shooting threat imperative to compliment the team’s frontcourt strength.

Vick is nowhere near the perfect player, but along with shooting, he would also bring athleticism, passion and even more NCAA tournament experience.

Say what you want about his time at Kansas, but his skill set instantly made the team more dangerous offensively.

And while Kansas was fighting threes with twos against Auburn, a 45% three-point shooter would’ve been useful.

And the biggest what if of them all: What if Grimes was the player everyone thought he would be?

There isn’t a program in the country that would’ve passed on the McDonald’s All-American Quentin Grimes.

Nothing he’s done in his basketball career would’ve pointed to him performing so far below his ability this season.

At the beginning of the year, I would’ve put my entire checking account (which is worth very little) that Grimes would finish as an all-conference player.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

But if Grimes was able to play at least somewhat close to the level of what was expected of him, that would’ve taken so much of the workload off of Lawson.

And while playing through Azubuike and De Sousa, Grimes’ assists numbers and open 3-point opportunities would have skyrocketed.

And now we’re back to the roster that was voted preseason No. 1 in the AP poll.

In this hypothetical, there are only a couple of teams that are arguably better than the Kansas Jayhawks at full strength.

It’s no question that they would win the Big 12 outright, but in my opinion, it would be either them or Duke as the betting favorites to win the National Title.

But as much as I would like for it to be true, living in the world of hypothetical “What If’s?” doesn’t change reality.

In reality, what was touted in the opening act as Bill Self’s best team in year’s, quickly and dramatically became one of his worst as the curtains closed.

The Kansas basketball team we witnessed this season was just far too flawed to overcome the difficult Round of 32 matchup that it was given.

There are plenty of areas to blame for this reality, some controllable and others not, but when this young team was robbed of its lone identity just days after conference play started, Kansas’s young guards were forced to become stars before they were ready to do so.

Maybe in a few years, we will look back at the 2018-19 season fondly, remembering this was the year that the four starting freshmen grew up and began a run of greatness.

Kansas fans should’ve ended the season partying up and down Mass Street. Instead, they are forced to focus on what could’ve been.